When I was going on and on about Smallville this summer, several people emailed or called me and said, "Smallville, shmallville. The greatest show on television is Alias."
(Actually, not a single one of them said or even thought "shmallville." But they should have.)
"Alias," I replied. "Isn't that the tv show that 13 Going on 30 was based on?"
"Jennifer Garner stars in both," they patiently replied, "but Alias is a double agent spy thriller."
"And 13 Going on 30 wasn't thrilling enough, is that what you're saying?"
"Thirteen Going on Thirty, Shmirteen Going on Shmirty," they didn't say.
To which I would have replied, given the chance, "How can Alias be any good? It's on one of the Big Three networks (ABC, to be exact), which means it has to be offensive to the religious and conservative people while still being utterly devoid of meaningful content."
Which just goes to show you how wrong a guy can be.
A couple of friends gave me the first season of Alias on DVD for my recent birthday, and so, even though I felt faintly disloyal to my friends in Smallville, Kansas, I sat down with my daughter and her roommate and a charming actor who is so young and beautiful that he still plays high school kids at the age of umpty-oof, and watched the pilot episode.
It's a great story, about which I can tell you almost nothing without giving far, far too much away. Except that it's a double-agent spy thriller in which really bad things happen just off camera, so you don't lose your lunch but you still chew your nails and, from time to time, break your heart.
It really is a great show. They have a formula I haven't seen before. Each hour-long episode usually contains a total of two capers, but the math isn't really that simple.
Since the episode before usually ended with a cliffhanger, the first part of the new episode resolves that storyline, making half a caper. Then there's a caper that begins and ends completely by three-fourths of the way through the hour. Then there's a third caper that begins, but leaves you dangling at the end, sure that Jennifer Garner will not, in fact, have any more of her teeth pulled out or be splattered on pavement or get caught by the police as she's stuck between two glass walls without the key to the only door.
The math, then, is: One-half caper, one whole caper, then another half caper, making two capers in total, but in fact you get parts of three.
This is very hard for me. If I'd been good at math, I'd have a real job, like being an engineer, instead of making stuff up and getting somebody to print it and bind it and sell it in bookstores. (Like Michael Moore, I make a career out of fibbing. I just admit it. Maybe that's why I don't sell as many copies. Note to self ...)
Alias has a cast to die for. Besides the inimitable Garner, who manages to look tough, vulnerable, mannish enough you can believe her kicking bad-guy b***, but womanly enough that you want to keep slapping the guys on the screen and warning them not to get involved with her because ... wait. I can't tell you in case you haven't seen the episode where ...
Then there's Ron Rifkin as the head of her office of SD6, the spy agency she works for. You've seen Rifkin many times before, and he's always good; but this is the part he was born for. He's small of stature, but always looks piercingly intelligent and more than a little dangerous.
Another standout is Victor Garber, who plays Garner's creepy untrustworthy and absolutely compelling father. And I can't tell you anything more about him, either, because ...
It's really hard writing a review that doesn't give stuff away.
All I can say is: This TV series feels like a good movie, every week, week after week. Sometime actor J.J. Abrams (he acted under the name Jeffrey Abrams, but no, you probably didn't notice his name then) is the creator and executive producer of the series, and he has written the season-ending, season-opening sequence each year, as well as occasion episodes in mid-season.
Thanks for sharing